


when you and sleep escape me

by clarabiss



Category: Samurai of Hyuga (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Gen, and me basically pouring my fears and anxieties on Masami, feat. shin's ineffective plot armour, sorry kiddo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 18:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarabiss/pseuds/clarabiss
Summary: The sunflowers have thrown their bright-yellow heads back in their chase after sunlight and Masami’s sure steps raise tiny clouds of dust in her path through the field. Toshio had looked and found nothing, but then again he had never known Shin like she had.Her body hasn’t forgotten the jab of fragile bones belonging to a squirming child held in her embrace.She searches in a measured pace, listening carefully, and when the sun inevitably dips down below the horizon, the sunflowers lower their heads to the ground and Masami sits on her haunches and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes.





	

(There’s an incessant sound at the edge of her hearing and she grits her teeth to shut it out as she concentrates on pulling the threads that have come loose from the hem of her kimono. Signs of wear and tear. She wonders how much longer it will last.  
  
A brief pause then the noise returns louder than before. Masami huffs her frustration and lifts her head. Her glare is hindered by harsh light that forces her to squint.  
  
With the sun behind him his features are cast in darkness, but there’s no mistaking the man who sits at the prow of the boat with his arms along the gunwale, his nails drumming on wood. Her heartbeat quickens to catch up with his rhythm.  
  
Her eyes sting and tears gather beneath her lashes.  
  
“Shin…”  
  
He seems to turn towards her with an odd twitchy movement as if he’s forgotten how to use his muscles. He stands, sways and falls soundlessly into the sea.  
  
By the time she breaks free of her shock and finally drags herself up to look over the edge, the water is still and clear. She only sees herself. Long strands of hair that reach the surface curl like black tendrils and frame her pale face.)

  
  
Masami wakes with a dry mouth and heaviness in her limbs. She licks her cracked lips and tastes salt. It makes her stomach heave.  
  
She lays on her back and breathes deeply until the shadows begin to slowly retract, the rise and fall of voices from somewhere farther away and the patter of raindrops on the roof in the background. Hatch’s sandals are in two different corners of the room, one of them upside down and Momoko’s obi is a colourful streak on the floor between it and Toshio’s clumsily folded shozoku.  
  
Masami looks around one more time, in vain. She knows Shin took everything he owned with him when he left.  
  
She decides to see what discussion the others are shutting her out of. With her ear pressed against the shōji that separates the hallway from the kitchen it feels to her like she’s once again face down on a tatami mat listening to the clash of katanas above her.  
  
“—cannot burden her with this responsibility,” Momoko is saying, brittle voice on the verge of breaking into sharp splinters.  
  
“And what do you propose we do?” Toshio says. The words seethe and spill out from the base of his throat, don’t roll gently over his tongue as usual.  
  
“I still have a place in Jijinto, we could go back there and—“  
  
“Running away…” Toshio coldly cuts her off and it doesn’t come as a surprise, not when they’ve spent the last few days blurring the line between arguing and fighting. “It is what you do best.”  
  
Still, Masami sucks in a breath and her whole body trembles. Momoko’s quiet reply is almost lost in the thrum of blood in her ears.  
  
“You are a cruel man.”  
  
She pushes away from the wall just as the doctor slides the door open and when she spots her Momoko’s eyelids flutter closed. Bruised from lack of sleep, they stand out against her otherwise ashen skin.  
  
“I shouldn’t have eavesdropped,” Masami says quickly, guilt colouring her cheeks in red.  
  
Momoko only looks at her, expression closed off and far away (and between her and Toshio, Masami has realised reading people is _hard_ ), before extending her arm.  
  
“Come with me,” she says. Her hand is cold and soft, but her grip is firm and remains so all the way to the marketplace even if the fine rain dampens their skin.  
  
Perhaps she has been swathed in coarse blankets where everything was slow and muffled for too long or perhaps there’s another reason, but the buzz of activity overwhelms her senses. A woman giggles and leans forward on her elbows while another raises withered flowers to her eye-level to find the perfect match; two men engage in a heated conversation while further down the road a group of three friends share a joke that makes one of them laugh so forcefully she then covers her mouth with her hands in embarrassment.  
  
They are all unbearably loud. _Here_ and _now_ , jarring her vision.  
  
She can’t recall what Shin was doing the last she saw him.  
  
Momoko deftly navigates the crowd, with careful touches that shift others out of her way and apologetic too sweet smiles, as she moves from stall to stall inspecting food and clothes and maps. She talks a man into letting Masami pet his horse and the girl is grateful for the rest and distance.  
  
The animal’s muzzle is smooth and warm and the mare snorts and shakes her head when the girl’s fingers stray uncomfortably close to one of her nostrils because she was too caught up watching the townsfolk go about their daily business.  
  
“They don’t know,” she finds herself saying.  
  
“Hmm?” Momoko is bent near the back of the cart, knocking on the wooden boards that form its floor to check their quality. She straightens and follows Masami’s gaze.  
  
“How can they not know?” There are no ripples in the surface of their lives as if there’s been no impact at all.  
  
“Shin would be the first to laugh at that notion, I think,” Momoko says, coming to stand at her side. Their shoulders touch through the worn fabric of their kimonos.  
  
“Don’t look for him here,” she whispers and when Masami’s breathing evens and her tremors lessen, she links their arms and walks her away from the horse and its cart. From time to time, she points out strangely-shaped clouds that have begun to clear away to reveal the purpling evening sky beneath.  
  
They are close to their house when Masami feels the doctor tense and she peers through the growing darkness to see Toshio sitting cross-legged on the ground in a meditation pose, his face turned upwards. The sound of their footsteps startles him. He seems surprised to see them and hesitantly raises one hand in greeting. The waning light falls in such a way that Masami can notice pale crescent marks where his nails have nearly broken the skin on his palm.  
  
His arm falls back in his lap as Momoko silently passes him by and Masami turns her attention further up to the criss-crossing scars that sometimes form legible words: candles, statue, letter.  
  
Missing from his list, she knows, is the greatest contradiction of all: a hero chosen and blessed, dead before he could fulfill his mission.  
  
She places her chin on the knees she’s drawn to her chest and looks up at the twinkling stars. She wonders how the end might come.  
  
Would it start slow with the stars flaring out of existence one-by-one before the tide rises and drowns the lands in seawater? Would they lose their minds to spirits who prey on weaknesses of the soul? Would they simply fall asleep one night and not wake up?  
  
Yet, there is a thought that repeatedly skips over the surface of her mind, scattering the others.  
  
_It would be worse if nothing happened._  
  
Beside her, Toshio has eased into the spirit world, his body still and empty as a carved figurine. She knocks the tips of her sandals together while she waits for the tightening of muscles in his jaw, the deepening of creases around his eyes or even the curl of his lips — any sign that he has found traces of Shin there. His shallow breathing leaves no mark despite the cold until a sharp exhale comes out as a billow of mist that quickly disperses when he stands, gaze trained on the night sky above.  
  
“There’s nothing to see,” he murmurs. Then he catches sight of the shivering girl on the ground and his shoulders drop. “You shouldn’t be out so late.”  
  
Masami doesn’t protest as he leads her back inside.

  
  
(In her dreams, she rides on Shin’s shoulders.  
  
It’s Shin, but sometimes he’s taller and dressed in a silk kimono and he holds his head high, towering over his surroundings. Sometimes his shoulders are slimmer, hips wider, soft black hair tickling her legs. Sometimes his skin is pale as if bleached with oshiroi, other times it’s burnt to a crisp by the sun.        
  
Sometimes she digs her elbows into his skull and demands to be put down _immediately_. Sometimes she curls her fingers in his hair and tugs hard. Sometimes his back bends beneath her weight until his forehead almost touches the dirt.  
  
But his hands… His hands are always cold on her ankles.)

  
***

  
(The sunflowers have thrown their bright-yellow heads back in their chase after sunlight and Masami’s sure steps raise tiny clouds of dust in her path through the field. Toshio had looked and found nothing, but then again he had never known Shin like she had.  
  
Her body hasn’t forgotten the jab of fragile bones belonging to a squirming child held in her embrace.  
  
She searches in a measured pace, listening carefully, and when the sun inevitably dips down below the horizon, the sunflowers lower their heads to the ground and Masami sits on her haunches and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes.  
  
It’s then that the smell hits her even though there is no wind to carry it. The tang of sweat and tobacco smoke lies thick and choking at the back of her throat.  
  
Masami runs.  
  
Her feet get caught in the lining of her kimono and she stumbles out of the field and into snow-covered woods. Cold winds lick at the wet stains on her cheeks and leave them tingling. Branches get tangled in her hair. She’s pushed down to her knees. Her fingers flex and where she had expected the bite of frost she finds the sting of coarse sand. The only sound is the hum of waves gently breaking on the shore.  
  
_I see he left you, too,_ she hears her growl, guttural and inhuman.  
  
“He didn’t want to!”  
  
There’s a sudden tension at her temples, an echo bouncing off the walls of her skull and when she shuts her eyes there’s a moving image etched into the back of her eyelids.  
  
_A young woman collapsed over the body of a dead man. Her fists fall weakly on his chest, press on the gaping wound there. Thumbs wipe away tears that aren’t his. Her frame convulses with silent screams._  
  
Masami’s ears pop and the pain recedes.  
  
The wolf staggers towards her, golden eyes dulled. Patches of fur are missing and the skin underneath is sore and blistering, stretched thin over protruding ribs and the abrupt curves of her spine— suffering from an insatiable hunger that Masami feels gnawing at her own insides.  
  
Moonlight tinges the crests of waves silver. The wolf tilts her head to one side.  
  
_What difference does that make?_ )

  
  
Her scalp itches and aches and Masami grasps fistfuls of hair, close to the root, and pulls and twists, but the sensation doesn’t subside and she tiptoes to the kitchen.  
  
A katana would be better, with its longer blade and keener edge. She remembers how the slightest pressure had been enough to draw her blood and she braces herself on the wall to stay upright.  
  
She settles for a knife.  
  
It cuts through half her locks— and the loss of their weight is soothing— and then her grip slips and it slashes across the palm that had been holding her hair in a ponytail.  
  
When they find her, Momoko’s mouth is a stiff, livid line and Toshio’s prolonged silence is suffocating.  
  
“Junko grabbed my hair,” Masami later explains, before he can form the wrong conclusions. He has to understand that it’s reasonable for her to rid herself of such flaws now that Shin is gone. She picks at her bandages, trying to ignore her reflection in the washbasin.  
  
“You don’t have to do this,” Toshio says from behind her, too tenderly, too much like he’s addressing _Hashimoto-san_. Even now. “Go with Momoko back to Jijinto and—“  
  
“Stop,” Masami says. She clears her voice of rough slivers. “Stop assuming you know what I need better than I do.”  
  
He takes a strand between two fingers and straightens it so that the scissors will trim better and the tips will be at the same level. “I’m sorry,” he whispers and she thinks he hasn’t been this firmly present in her _here_ and _now_ since the Baron’s island. Warm drops of water make their way down the nape of her neck, mirroring the ones that trail down her cheeks.  
  
She doesn’t say, _I miss him_. She doesn’t say, _I wish we’d had more time._  
  
More time to commit his features and habits to memory. More time to strengthen a bond that feels like nothing more than an unraveling thread. And what little she’d had she had wasted with petty insults and complaints.  
  
She doesn’t say, but there’s a shared regret pulsing in the silence that falls between them and she immerses herself in it, finding solace.  
  
When he’s done, Toshio kneels in front of her and checks that the lengths are equal on either side. It’s short, the ends barely reaching the line of her jaw and one part is noticeably the result of shoddier work. He nods.  
  
“It suits you.”  
  
That sparks a recollection, of the start of a journey in stifling heat, and Masami extends her hand palm up for him to read, offering a vestige of certainty. He spares it a brief glance, then closes it with his own. Callouses brush her knuckles.  
  
“No need for that,” he says. “I trust you.”  
  
Masami smiles, a spasm of muscles that have become unaccustomed to use. She busies her tongue with words she can say. “Have you apologised to Momoko?”  
  
He raises an eyebrow at the unexpected change of subject. “Yes, I have.”  
  
“Good. We can’t allow such disputes to fracture our group.” She angles her chin upwards. “We have a world to save.”  
  
Toshio stares at her, lips slowly curling, breath trapped in his chest until he leans his forehead on her shoulder, their joined hands caught awkwardly between their bodies.  
  
It takes her a moment to realise he’s quietly laughing.

  
  
(“You cut your hair,” the woman says eventually, halting her stride. Her bare feet are buried in the sand and her fur-coated back is hunched beneath the burden of heat. She flashes her a mocking grin.  
  
Masami tucks a shorn lock behind her ear, self-consciously, before shaking her head and letting it coil on her face instead. There’s a question plaguing her mind, begging to be asked. “Toshio… says I remind him of Shin.”  
  
The forceful march resumes. The sun climbs further up the sky and beads of sweat form on Junko’s brow. “Who did it?”  
  
Masami crosses her arms and sniffs, her turn to be contemptuous. “Not anything that you can stab to death.” Her eyes flicker towards the shimmering greenblue water. “He drowned.”  
  
A shudder tears through Junko’s form, whether a failed burst of laughter or sob, she can’t tell. The woman thrusts her sword into the ground and then sits with the soft underside of her chin resting on its hilt.  
  
“You weren’t there.”  
  
Masami loops a strand around her thumb, so tightly it might snap. “So?”  
  
“So…” Her lips unfurl in that same grin, sharper than the last. “He didn’t die for you.”  
  
The first spell Masami ever learned was a simple one that made the written paper wrap itself into a cube, brightly lit from within. She used many of them when she lay on her belly beneath her covers, devouring scroll after scroll— stories she has been thinking about lately and how by their rules, the faithful bodyguard dying in defence of his charge would have been a more fitting, satisfying conclusion.  
  
Now, she would unfold the cubes and let them burn.  
  
Masami settles on the heated sand, crossing her legs at the ankles. “And you didn’t kill him.”  
  
She watches her statement strike true in the way the thick hairs on her arms bristle, in the way her ribs tremble with each breath. Gold eyes focus on her with a blazing intensity, but Masami leans back on her elbows and gazes at the sky above. A breeze lightly touches her exposed neck.  
  
Junko does chuckle this time, an oddly delighted sound. “You remind him of Shin, huh? Well… not the Shin I knew.”)

  
***

  
(There’s an incessant sound at the edge of her hearing and Masami wrinkles her nose and opens her eyes to see Shin’s head leaning on his forearms. He’s nervously tapping his fingers on drenched wood and she soon realises he’s not on the cart anymore.  
  
“How did you get there?” she whispers.  
  
“Must’ve rolled off in my sleep,” he says and Masami covers her mouth, feels its corners rising.  
  
“That sounds like you.”  
  
He looks at her then for a beat or two, before his eyes slide off her face. “I was going to leave.”  
  
“That…” she stutters to a stop, too many thoughts clashing, _why_ ringing louder than the others. But his hands are on the sheath of his (no, _her_ ) katana, their irregular clenching accompanied by hushed _clinks_ , and she dreads his answers. “…sounds like you, too.”  
  
His grey skin seems to lose even more color, the reddish-brown dots on the bridge of his nose and arc of his cheekbones becoming more visible, and the pattern of lines carved into it changes with each passing emotion. He looks older.  
  
He pushes the sword away. “How are you?” he asks and Masami lies again.  
  
“I’m fine.” It’s always easier when the remnants of her nightmares are still skittering along her nerves.  
  
Shin sighs. “Well, I'm here. When you feel like talkin’, tug my sleeve.” He follows her quizzical gaze to his bare arms and shrugs with one shoulder, a faint smile pulling at his lips. (She will and at some point the lying stops, but for now—) She crawls closer and pokes him somewhere above the eyebrow.  
  
Laughter doesn’t smooth over his creases, doesn’t color his skin in a healthier hue. Signs of wear and tear. She wonders how lasting they are.  
  
He squeezes her nose between two fingers and grins. “Brat,” he says, fondly. "That works, too.")

 

Cold water laps at her ankles. Masami wraps her arms around herself to contain the warmth that’s bubbling in her chest and spreading all the way to her fingertips and almost numb toes.  
  
_He’s here. He’s still here._  
  
As far as she can see, raindrops shatter the sea’s surface into a multitude of tiny ripples.

**Author's Note:**

> Short-haired Masami is my one wish.
> 
> You can also find me at zappacats.tumblr.com, the other account named after one of my cats.
> 
> Title taken from 'Cloudbusting' by Kate Bush.


End file.
